КОЛЕЛОТО НА СЪДБАТА: The Wheel of Fortune Keywords

 The Wheel of Fortune Keywords

Fate, luck, and destiny. Good luck. Unexpected good fortune.

The Wheel of Fortune Symbols

A wheel turning clockwise with rising/falling figures or beasts on it. Waite also includes a good many Hebrew letters and alchemical symbols. Often there is a sphinx perched atop the wheel.

The Wheel of Fortune Upright Meaning

With Jupiter as its ruling planet, 

the Wheel of Fortune 

is all about luck and change. 

The wheel symbolizes completeness as well as the rise and fall of fortunes and the message that what goes around comes around. Almost every definition of this card indicates abundance, happiness, elevation, or luck; a change that just happens, and brings with it great joy.

The Wheel of Fortune Deeper Meaning

As much as the Tarot is about what a querent can do to change their life or self, there are cards that admit that sometimes you just get lucky. Sometimes things happen to you over which you have no control, and you rise of fall on that turn of the wheel.

This is the card about how we sometimes find ourselves soaring up or down on life's Ferris wheel. The Wheel can mean movement, change or evolution, and in that respect it can be about how we all change positions, some of us rising some of us falling, some dropping to a nadir, some reaching a zenith.

Most of the time, however, this card suggests that such changes will bring with them good fortune. The person you're reading for is going to get that money, that job, that promotion, that marriage proposal, that break they've been waiting for.

Call it karmic payback for all the good things they've done in life - destiny or just luck - but whatever lotteries are out there, large or small, they've just won one.

The Wheel of Fortune Reversed

The Wheel of Fortune is about Luck, about transitions and changes, sometimes about Karma. Generally speaking, it is about things that happen to us that change our lives...rather than, as with so many other cards, things we ourselves do to create a change. What does it mean reversed?

1) Opposite: Usually the Wheel is read positively as moving up. There is luck and good fortune in it, the implication that we are going to be moving up (deservingly) while someone else (deservingly) moves down. Thus, the opposite would be, quite simply, bad luck, misfortune. Instead of heading up to the top of the wheel, we're going to be hitting the bottom. It's the nadir instead of the zenith. Someone else will be getting the promotion or position we want, and we, alas, might well be getting laid off or transferred.

As with good luck, there is nothing to be done about bad luck but accept it and make the best out of it.

2) Blocked: If we read the energy as blocked, then we have to assume that the wheel wants to move up, wants to turn, but isn't being allowed to. Hence, in this reading, the wheel is stuck. It is moving neither up nor down. Rather like a when a Ferris Wheel comes to a stop, wherever you are, there you are and there is no change.

I, personally, find this more distressing than if the wheel were moving down. An unmoving wheel means no changes - no going anywhere. The problem is, that the querent might not be able to alter this as the Wheel's energy usually comes from without - so if the company that a person works for is freezing all jobs, no promotions or demotions, then that's the way it is and there's nothing the employee can do to change that. They can leave the job, but they can't force the company to "unfreeze" and start promoting/demoting again.

3) Upside-down: There seems, on the surface, little difference if we turn this card upside-down - it's a wheel, a circle, with no top, no bottom. And yet, using Rider-Waite, we can see a change. The Sphinx is at the bottom. The "Set" creature (chaotic/devilish creature) is at the top. The Serpent switches sides and is moving up instead of down.

To understand, think of it this way. The Sphinx is at the top, hovering above the Ferris wheel. You ride up to talk to the Sphinx. Then you ride down and have to deal with Set. Then back up again.

Reverse the card and the implication is that when you rise to the top, you meet Set instead of the Sphinx! What ought to be good luck is going to be bad. In this case, the promotion that should give you what you want, that ought to be good fortune, lands you in hell instead.

This is a bit worse than just "bad luck." The idea here is that the external forces creating that luck are unreliable; you can't trust the luck you're getting to be what it seems.

The Wheel of Fortune in Love

Your relationship feels like it was meant to be. A person who has good fortune dropped in their lap. Feeling very lucky or fortunate how circumstances turned out.

Go deeper and read more about what the Wheel of Fortune means as feelings.

The Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card in Different Decks

Compare the different interpretations of The Wheel of Fortune by various tarot artists and traditions. Click the card you like to see more cards from that tarot deck.

 

 

 

 

Did this tarot meaning resonate with you? Transform your readings with all of our 78 upright and reversed meanings in The Essential Guide to Tarot Card Meanings.

Available now only at Aeclectic Tarot